The Play of Reflections and Speed

About

Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse (The Play of Reflections and Speed, 1925) is an experimental silent film by French filmmaker Henri Chomette. Produced between 1923 and 1925, the black-and-white film explores the expressive possibilities of cinema through light, movement, reflections, rhythm, and visual distortion, largely dispensing with conventional narrative and recognizable characters. The film begins with abstract images of light reflected through crystals, producing kaleidoscopic patterns and shifting geometric forms. It then moves into dynamic views of Paris, filmed from moving public transport as the camera travels through tunnels, along elevated railway lines, past buildings, and across the Seine. Through accelerated motion, unusual camera angles, superimpositions, and rhythmic editing, Chomette transforms familiar urban landscapes into a constantly changing visual composition. The city becomes less a subject of documentary observation than a source of movement, energy, and cinematic abstraction. A central concern of the film is the relationship between perception and cinematic technique. By manipulating the speed, framing, and succession of images, Chomette demonstrates how the camera can reorganize ordinary experience and reveal visual patterns that escape everyday perception.

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